John McCain says he would have not invaded Iraq. -Time

Sen. John McCain (R) -Time/Getty

Senator John McCain says if he had been president in 2003 he would not have invaded Iraq. -Time At an event hosted by CNN he said that he would have seen through the "flimsy" evidence and chosen to avoid war. McCain voted for the 2003 invasion in his capacity of Arizona Senator. He claims his vote was based on the integrity of Secretary of State Colin Powel.

My Comment:

Full confession, i voted for McCain in 2008 and i generally like him, but this is ridiculous. If he thought the intel on Iraq's WMD's was flimsy why the hell did he vote for the war? Was it party politics? Or was he actually convinced, along with most of the rest of congress, including Hillary Clinton (D), and is just invoking hindsight? This is a classic case of a politician trying to downplay his role in an unpopular war. Expect more of the same this campaign season.

And regardless of the WMD's the true justifications of the Iraq War include the expiration of sanctions that had kept Saddam from having WMD's. Had those sanctions expired there was a very good chance of him rebuilding his army and restarting his weapons programs. That and the fact there was an undeclared war in effect since the end of the first Gulf War. Both sides were in active combat due to the "no fly" zones. And of course, Saddam was not cooperating with U.N. inspectors which was enough causus belli right there to make the war legal. WMD's were just the public justification since these issues were probably too difficult to explain to the public in a way that they would actually support the war. Were those good enough reasons to go to war? I'll leave that up to you to decide. They definitely should not have used WMD's as the primary justification though, and if it was based on that alone it would have been unjustified.

As for regimes with WMD's i know of two nations that gave them up after the Iraq war, Libya and Syria. Was the Iraq war an influence in that decision? I don't know. They must have thought about it though. But on the other hand both of those regimes gave them up without the need for foreign intervention. As always, hindsight is 20/20.